Improving Movement Efficiency through Qualitative Slowness: A Discussion between Bergson’s Philosophy and Asian Martial Arts’ Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Bergson’s philosophy marked a turning point in Western understanding of time by differentiating quantitative time—apprehended by intelligence—from qualitative time—duration, embedded in consciousness and provided by intuition. Even if by unveiling those two modalities, he could beneficially reconsider the very nature of, altogether, movement, perception, liberty, and the present, and through this outline a conception of slowness, Bergson did not further the analysis towards the concrete unfolding of movement or slowness, mostly because these only interested him insofar as they could enlighten the functioning of consciousness—i.e. as case studies. For their part, Asian traditional martial arts came to elaborate a highly demanding expertise in movement efficiency based on kinesthetic sensitivity that made the variable of time a key lever of skill acquisition and transmission, with slowness being conferred a crucial importance. What does slowness specifically perform? Is there just a difference of degree between slow practices and the ones executed at fast speed? By crossing Bergson’s indirect insight into the notion with its pragmatic use in Asian martial arts, this paper will distinguish two kinds of slowness: first, a quantitative and relative slowedness, that, as an artificial reduction of the pace of action, enables new modalities of consciousness to emerge for the benefit of understanding movement. Second, a qualitative and absolute slowness, which manifests a present imbued with and driven by duration, when action is immediately guided by the intuitive feeling of effort—this absolute slowness reflecting the natural state of movement sought by martial arts.

KEYWORDS:

• Slowness
• Bergson
• martial arts
• movement efficiency
• sensory modality

Acknowledgement

We would like to express our very great appreciation to Yamasaki sensei, Iwaki sensei, Xu laoshi and Lin laoshi who were willing to share openly with us their precious expertise.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Bergson discusses Zeno’s paradoxes in his three main works: DI, p.82–86; MM, p.229‑232; EC, p.308–313. From here onwards, we will refer to Bergson’s works as follows: DI for Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Time and Free Will), MM for Matière et mémoire (Matter and Memory), EC for L’évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution), ES for L’énergie spirituelle (Mind-Energy), PM for La pensée et le mouvant (The Creative Mind) (Bergson, [1889] 2003; [1896] 2011; [1907] 1999); [1919] 2006; [1938] 1999).

2. Bergson assumes that Matter and Memory is ‘frankly dualistic’ but ‘deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism’ (MM, introduction).

3. Image has a distinctive meaning in Bergson’s philosophy, an ‘existence half the way between the thing and the representation’ (MM, foreword).

4. We might object, as Bergson stated later, that there is only a difference of degree and not of kind between perception of matter and matter itself (MM, p.38). Though this difference, from the perspective of consciousness, is qualitative, even existential, as the difference between there is and there is not (as in Noë’s analyses, see below). Hence the importance of the notion of qualitative leap.

5. The widespread bijective classification of Chinese martial arts into external and internal styles is generally employed among practitioners to emphasise a difference in the use of power, explicit or not, with the consequences in the training focus that follow (internal work—内功—for the former, external work—外功—for the latter). Nonetheless, as Henning pointed out (1997), it results from a late historical construction, and ‘irrelevant’ add many masters, as all practices consist in a mix of internal and external work (XL, LL, YS). Changquan, 長拳, refers to practices at long-range, mostly relying on punches and kicks.

6. No consensus can be found on the proper definition of such a protean corpus as martial arts despite the numerous efforts to identify a common denominator (Bäck and Kim 1979; Cadot & Gaudin, 2005—retrieved in Testot 2008; Allen 2015; etc.) or a comprehensive typology (Gaudin 2009; Martinkova and Parry 2016; etc.). If those works reveal enlightening features of martial arts—as their ‘eudemonic dimension’, (Hackney 2009); the ‘ideological conditioning’ that underlies them, (Cynarski 2018); etc.—they fail to encompass and account for all manifestations of martial arts. More crucially, no matter how a practice itself might be a piori labelled, the training can sensibly deviate from expectations under the subjective influence of a designated teacher. To avoid constraints of any preconceptions of martial arts (Fouquet 1996; Harrison 2015) and acknowledge their present polysemy, in this paper, we adopt the broadest possible definition as body techniques originally oriented towards combat (meaning no matter their present focus) and embrace an inductive approach by directly delving into the fieldwork of the practice as Bowman (2017) recommend.

7. See (Doganis 2012), pp.95–97, and (Legendre and Ibrahime 2018). Simondon recognizes the same propensity to artificial objects which, by becoming ‘concrete’, tend to approach the ‘mode of existence of natural objects’ (1958, 57).

8. For Sheets-Johnstone, reflexive consciousness represents the recent expression of a phylogenetic evolution stemming from the most rudimentary proprioceptive awareness (1998).

9. ‘Do we not count feelings, sensations, ideas, all of which permeate one another, and each of which, for its part, takes up the whole of the soul?’ (DI, p.66).

10. ‘Perceptual presence is the problem for the theory of perception’ says Noë (2012, 74). Any kind of presence has a pattern of appearance, possesses a sensory dependency, meaning is made available uniquely to a specific sensory modality (Noë 2004, p. 107 sqq.). In his conceptual framework, the transition, more than a thing, would appear as an event, a creature of time that requires the appropriate instrument (Noë 2012, 80–81). From Bergson himself: ‘our perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas occur under two aspects: the one clear and precise, but impersonal; the other confused, ever changing, and inexpressible, because language cannot get hold of it without arresting its mobility or fit it into its common-place forms without making it into public property’, DI, p.96.

11. ‘Proprioception operates within a non-relative, non-perspectival, intra-corporeal spatial framework that is different from both egocentric and allocentric frameworks … Our pre-reflective, kinesthetic-proprioceptive experience thus plays a role in the organization of perception, but in a way that does not require the body itself to be a perceptual object’ (Gallagher, 2005, 138). See also (Clark 1997).

12. Chinese and Japanese languages share the same etymology for the term natural自然: as it is (然) by itself (自). Reason why it is often rendered by spontaneous. Csepregi defines as follows such spontaneity of the body as ‘opposed to reflexive willing: we no longer think or will the movement, we make an unreflective usage of the body by letting it discover and take the most suitable form. Such a surrender to the body’s ability to detect meanings and values occurs whenever our movements naturally adjust themselves to the characteristics of the objects or the tasks’ (Csepregi 2006, 54). ‘When I touch something, the intention of my touch can determine, not just my conscious focus, but how my body will react’ (Gallagher, 2005, 142).

13. ‘A movement receives its coherence and organization from the body’s propensity to apprehend and produce rhythmic patterns … Moving according to a kinetic logic does not consist of repeating familiar rhythmic patterns but of allowing the unfolding of rhythmic structures to be dictated by the dynamic flow of the movement itself’ (Csepregi 2006, p.101, 107).

14. In EC (p.58,59), Bergson underlines the difference between simply repeating and replying, the latter supposing adaptation, then creativity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [19F18309].